Tag Archives: Time Management

It’s all well and good to talk about specific examples of sacrifice in business. For every company like Grace Manufacturing (creators of the Microplane), there are many who go under or simply cease to exist. They never learned the value of sacrifice.

But what can we do in our personal lives? If we are presented with an opportunity for greater adventure and enrichment, what will we have to leave behind?

Comfort

Strip yourself of the notion that everything has to meet every one of your high standards before you make a move. High standards are goals, not preconditions. In fact, the best reason to embark on an adventure is to achieve those awesome goals you set for yourself.

And remember that physical discomfort is the least of your concerns, and the easiest to overcome.

Time

After concern for comfort falls away, we have the responsibility to fill our days only with those activities that can help us achieve our goals. You’d be amazed how much time you can squeeze into 24 hours if you sacrifice things that don’t matter. (Hint: it’s way more than you thought). It all comes back to learning how to say No. We’re not just after opportunities for novelty’s sake, we need the right opportunities, the adventures that enrich us.

Any adventure in which you will be comfortable 100% of the time is not the right opportunity. They’re not worth sacrificing your time.

Your Self

This is where things really get personal. When I talk about the self, I’m referring to those aspects of our character we would rather not see when we look in the mirror. Our pride, our greed… anything that momentarily stimulates us at the expense of permanent fulfillment has to go.

We can fool ourselves into thinking we could work under any conditions, that we hold no biases, and that we would devote however much time is required – at any time day or night – to reach our goals. But if we still have pride we won’t achieve any goals worth reaching.

Remember that ambition is a vital part of the ego. Yet having a big ego with little ambition is like a giant beach ball that blocks out the sun. People with big egos overshadow everything around them, but they have no substance and their actions carry no force. If they sacrifice any part of themselves, they lose everything (that’s pride).

Instead, we want the reverse… something solid and stable but also unobtrusive….

Like a cannonball.

Sacrifice your comfort and submit to having a fire lit under your ass. It’s in your nature to leave comfort behind and fly to the target.

Let people underestimate you even as you exceed their highest expectations.

Your sacrifice makes you unstoppable.

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If you want to be an overnight success (and who doesn’t?), usually it means working through the night… for twenty years. We aren’t born successful, we learn it moment by moment, day by day. The secret is saying ‘No.’

Now sure, if you want to be successful you need to pour out your heart when no one’s looking, without any hope of reward. You need to devote your life to making the lives of others better. Both of these involve saying ‘Yes’ a lot, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

But just as important is No. The more times you say Yes, clearly the more people will expect you to say Yes, no matter what. And if you always say Yes, you’ll try to find time to do what matters.

If you’re always trying to find time to complete something amazing, it will never happen. Let me repeat that again:

If you’re trying to find time to do something, you never will.

Finding time implies that it’s something precious (true), that it’s hidden (also true), that it’s elusive (not quite true), and that if you just work a little harder at it, you’ll find all you need before too long (tragically false).

Our time on this Earth is a treasure, but where many people get stuck is thinking that serving others means Always saying Yes. If you’re stuck in Always, you won’t be able to find time. Always is like the house guest that never leaves. Few things last forever in this world…. except maybe our attachment to a few attractive, seductive, utterly wrong ideas.

Always saying Yes is one of those ideas. Guard against this with your life. If you want to achieve greatness, learn to say No. Only No is the key that can open the treasure of time.

Like any double-edged sword, learn how to wield Yes and No so you don’t cut yourself. No means focusing on what you need to do, at the expense of what others might want you to do. Always Yes means sacrificing what you need to do for what others think you should do, every time.

You just caught yourself saying, “I can’t find the time….!” I’m right there with you, and I still get cut when I draw that sword. But nothing great was ever created out of ‘found’ time. Great companies and great meals never emerge from great people finding time. They create time for something unexpected, something revolutionary, at the risk of everything that had come before. They did it by making time. Late night, all-night, early mornings, whatever it takes. And believe me, it takes resilience and courage… maybe even twenty years’ worth.

The first person to intentionally combine egg yolks, heavy cream, and large amounts of chocolate? Genius. They may not have gotten it right the first time, or the second, or even the thirty-fifth… But I’m so glad they made the time to perfect it. Thanks to Chow, now you and I can do the same.